Vengeance (The Captive #6)(13)

“Get out of here,” another one of the men in white told her. “Unless you plan to join them.”

Tempest took a step away as the other two heads in the stocks looked up at her. They were residents she recognized from town, she didn’t know what they’d done to deserve this, but she didn’t want to join them. She’d never been one to make waves. If she had as a child, she would have been killed, as an adult she’d retained the air of invisibility and compliance that had allowed her to survive, until now.

Making her way down the street, she glanced at the gingerbread houses, chalets, and log cabins lining the snow covered roadway. Normally the homes had a quaint, warm air about them that always made her smile. Now the homes felt cold and lifeless; sadness and uncertainty enshrouded the buildings. The strangers who had inserted themselves into their world had stifled the life and laughter once filling them.

Turning onto the next road, she made her way past the shops on the sides of the street. Most of them had more men and women in white standing outside of their doorways. She walked until she arrived at the small red and white gingerbread house she shared with her best friend and fellow ex-orphan, Pallas. They had both aged out of the orphanage three years ago, when they’d turned seventeen.

Tempest hurried toward the door. Her hand shook when she turned the knob and cautiously poked her head inside. Shadows slid over the walls as the trees outside swayed in the howling wind. Tempest stepped inside and closed the door behind her. She pulled back the hood of her cloak as she moved further into the home.

Glancing into the living room, her gaze traveled over the couch and scratched wooden table within. Pallas’s pay from working at the blood bank, and her meager wages from the orphanage didn’t allow them to be able to afford much, but they were both happy here. It was the first secure house either of them had ever known, and they’d spent a lot of time turning it into a home with their assorted snow globe collection, Pallas’s beautifully sewn baby blue curtains, and the numerous green ferns Tempest had gathered and planted in the summer.

“Pallas!” she called nervously into the home.

Silence greeted her. Walking further into the home, she peered into Pallas’s room before her own. Everything was as she’d left it, except her clover green comforter had been tossed back, and an indent of someone’s head was still in her pillow. They’d come here too, Tempest realized as she moved into the room to fix the comforter. Her fingers ran over the soft material as she pulled it into place. She’d throw the pillow out if she ever got a chance to return home, but she doubted that would happen.

Glancing up, she caught her pale reflection in the mirror across the way. She wasn’t astonished to find shadows encircling her deep brown eyes. Turning away, she walked to her trunk and pulled a few articles of clothing free. She had a feeling they wouldn’t be allowed to roam the town for much longer and wanted to gather some more of her things while she still could. She placed the clothes into a sack and tugged the drawstring closed.

She pulled the hood over her head before leaving the house and walking toward the blood bank. It was the only other place she could think of that Pallas would be. There were over a dozen men and women in white standing on the steps of the large chalet renovated into the blood bank after the war. She’d placed one foot on the first step when two men moved to intercept her.

“No one will be entering today,” one of them informed her briskly.

“I’m only looking for my friend,” she replied. “She works here.”

“No one is entering today.”

Tempest glanced at the closed front doors, but she removed her foot from the step. If Pallas wasn’t in there, then where was she? And if they weren’t allowed to enter the blood bank, and these troops had captured all of the humans, how were they going to survive?

Uneasiness had been eating at her since these vampires had invaded her town, but now true terror began to slither through her stomach. Nausea twisted in her gut; she retreated further from the blood bank and toward the businesses. Her gaze slid over the men and women patrolling high up in the mountains again.

They were trapped here. The solitary air she’d always loved about the town now worked completely against them. It would be almost impossible for anyone to move in and out of the valley without being spotted from above. Almost impossible, she contemplated as she continued down the street. She could find a way out of here; the only problem was she didn’t know if she was brave enough to attempt it.

She passed other residents of the town as she made her way back toward the orphanage. Her step faltered when she spotted the blockade at the far end of the road. The street they had barricaded was the easiest and fastest way out of town; there were no homes beyond the barricade. There was only miles of uninhabited valley and mountains rarely traversed by the outside world.

She didn’t have to look behind the hotel to know the mountain road, the only other way out of town, would also be blocked. The mountain road was far less traveled on a normal day. It was more hazardous than the main road as it wound through steep mountain passes. In the winter, rockslides often blocked the passage until spring.

Staring at the line of men and women in the white cloaks, stretching from one mountain to another across the road, her hands clenched as she fought the urge to lift her fingers and start gnawing on her nails. It was a habit she’d battled for years, but she couldn’t quite shake it.